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Saturday, January 08, 2011

One of them, possibly both, is going to end up a loser

Given that the British electorate as a whole only gets to vote once every 4-5 years, it is perhaps inevitable that by-elections tend to wield a somewhat disproportionate influence on our political process.

Usually they follow a fairly predictable pattern. The public – or the media – identifies which of the two main opposition parties is most likely to give the governing party a good kicking, and the 'protest vote' does the rest.

But we are in unchartered waters now. There are two governing parties, only one main opposition party, and the new-ish leader of that party is something of an unknown quantity to most voters.

All of which is what makes Thursday's Oldham and Saddleworth by-election possibly the most fascinating such encounter since the Darlington contest of 1983 which, to Labour's ultimate detriment, saved the leadership of Michael Foot.

On the face of it, it ought to be plan sailing for Labour. In a few short months, the Con-Lib coalition has slashed public spending, put up VAT, and scrapped much of the regional aid budget that was helping former industrial towns like Oldham to find a new role.

Not only that, but the seat was won by Labour in the general election last May, before MP Phil Woolas was disqualified from Parliament for having lied about his Lib Dem opponent on his election literature.

One of the many imponderables in this contest is whether the fate of Mr Woolas will help or hinder Labour's cause here.

The fact that he was actually quite a popular local MP might appear to favour the party, but some voters may feel he was too readily hung out to dry by the Labour establishment, and punish the party accordingly.

Inevitably given its status as a three-way marginal, 'Old and Sad' is being viewed as something of a mini-referendum – not just on the Coalition, but on Labour leader Ed Miliband.

If Labour cannot even win by-elections in seats it already holds, serious questions will start to be asked as to whether it can win anywhere else under Mr Miliband's leadership.

But for Lib Dem leader Nick Clegg, too, a defeat on Thursday would be seen as a significant blow.

His party's candidate, Elwyn Watkins, may well feel the seat is his by moral and indefeasible right having been on the wrong end of Mr Woolas's misdemeanours, but politics doesn't work like that.

Undoubtedly the leader with the least to lose and the most to gain here is Prime Minister David Cameron.

For one, the Conservative candidate Kashif Ali started the contest in third place. For another, the Tories have been accused of soft-pedalling their campaign in a bid to help their Lib Dem partners.

Perhaps realising he is in with an outside chance of a stunning victory Mr Cameron is now doing his best to dispel that impression, becoming the first premier to campaign in a by-election for 13 years.

Yet ironically a Tory win, in a seat where the Lib Dems began as the main challengers, might end up being more destabilising for the Coalition than a Labour triumph.

Mr Clegg would then face more tough questions from his own activists and MPs as to what exactly the Lib Dems are getting out of the Coalition.

A Tory victory would simply reinforce the idea that it is the Lib Dems who are taking all the political pain while Mr Cameron reaps the political dividends.

But whoever wins on Thursday, at least one and possibly both of Mr Cameron's fellow party leaders are going to be waking up to some difficult headlines on Friday morning.

And for either or both of them, that could set the tone for a tricky political year ahead.

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"He saw politics very much like Trollope, as the interplay of personalities seeking preferment, rather than, like me, as a conflict of principles and programmes about social and economic change."

Denis Healey, writing about Roy Jenkins in "The Time of My Life."

"I'll tell you what happens with impossible promises. You start with a series of far-fetched resolutions, and these are then pickled into a rigid dogma, a code. And you go through the years sticking to that, outdated, misplaced, irrelevant to the real needs, and you end in the grotesque chaos of a Labour council, a Labour council, hiring taxis to scuttle round the city handing out redundancy notices to its own workers. I'll tell you - and you'll listen - you can't play politics with people's jobs and with people's homes and with people's services."

Neil Kinnock, Bournemouth 1985

"But the most eloquent message concerns the Blair government. It must be right at all times. Above all, the integrity of the leader can never be challenged. He never did hype up intelligence. He didn't take Britain to war on any other than the stated terms. Any suggestion of half-truth, or disguised intention, or concealed Bushite promises is the most disgraceful imaginable charge that deserves a state response that knows no limit.

"That's how a sideshow came to take over national life. Now it seems to have taken a wretched, guiltless man's life with it. Such is the dynamic that can be unleashed by a leader who believes his own reputation to be the core value his country must defend."

Hugo Young, on the death of Dr David Kelly, 2003

"The socialism I believe in is everyone working for each other, everyone having a share of the rewards. It's the way I see football, the way I see life."